With the 1308 Lady Margaret on hold awaiting nameplates I thought I'd get my next project underway. For some time I've been researching the Foxfield Railway's preserved crane tank loco.

Affectionately known throughout its life as "Dubsy" but never actually named, this locomotive was built by Dubs and Co of Glasgow in 1901 and delivered to the Shelton Iron & Steel Works in Stoke-on-Trent. It remained at Shelton Bar throughout its life. "Dubsy" was originally coal fired but was converted to oil firing in 1962. This modification prolonged the useful life of the locomotive, but not by much as it was taken out of regular use in 1968.

Purchased for preservation in April 1970 by two members of the East Somerset Railway, "Dubsy" was not moved to Somerset until 2 September 1973. The oil burning equipment was removed in 1977 and "Dubsy" returned to service as a coal burner, giving almost nine years of continuous service at Cranmore on shed pilot duties and a lot of lifting work, as the East Somerset Railway was constructing its extension to Mendip Vale. Withdrawn from service for overhaul in 1986, this was never carried out and eventually the owners offered it for sale to private owners at Foxfield to reunite it with ex-Shelton locos.

I thought it would be good to get the crane built as that seemed to be a bit more complicated than the rest, probably because it is unknown teritory for me.

I did some calculations similar to those on the last project using a couple of side-on shots so the foreshortening was kept to a minimum, again using the only known dimensions, the wheels, and applying the same formula I obtained the scale of the photos. This time though I came up with several different answers, so I had to keep checking and re-checking.

This time I tried re-scaling one of the pictures, the scale of which was approximately 6.6mm-1ft which meant loosing around 40% to make it 4mm-1ft. [1.76 scale.] I used Microsoft paint to reduce the image, then printed it out. It worked, the measurements in this photo more or less matched my calculations.

I know, some of you may cringe at the term 'more or less' I suppose some time I'll have to work to working drawings but with my current level of skill near enough is good enough.

So here's the first pictures :-

This is how she looked in her pre-preservation days

On the left is the two photos with the scale measurements marked on them, top right is the reduced photo to be used for templates etc.

The said photo with the crane jib cut out and used as a template for the sides rails shown here cut out ready to be laminated together

I bought this tool for a few centimes, it's some kind of piezo type current generator when you plunge the button on top it sends a current through the terminal on the side. It makes an excellent center punch seen here being used to punch the rivets into a 0.25mm layer of the jib, this was then stuck on the outside of the 1mm layer.

You can just make out the effect achieved, later photos will show the effect more clearly.

More later in part 2